Mania Nosratinia - Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Iran
Elnaz Sarabchian - Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch, Iran

The effect of students’ personality and emotional intelligence on the learning process and achievement in the classroom has been well documented. However little is known about the relationship between students’ big-five personality traits and their emotional intelligence ability. This study investigates the relationship among EFL learners’ personality characteristics and competencies of emotional intelligence. Major emphasis was placed on the extent to which several emotional intelligence competencies can be predicted by personality factors. A group of 210 male and female EFL students, between 19 to 40 years old, majoring in English Translation and English Literature at Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran were randomly selected and given two questionnaires. The NEO-Five Factor Inventory, which provides measure of five well-established domains of personality including: Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, was used to assess students’ personality traits. The emotional intelligence of the students comprised of five clusters: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Adaptability, Stress Management, and General Mood Components, was assessed through Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory. Multiple regressions were run to probe the power of personality traits in predicting emotional intelligence. According to the results, Neuroticism (R = .63, R2 = .40) was the best predictor of emotional intelligence and predicted 40 percent of emotional intelligence. Conscientiousness was the second best predictor, which increased the predictive power to 48 percent (R = .693, R2 = .480). Extroversion was the third best predictor, which increased the predictive power up to about 50 percent (R = .713, R2 = .508), and finally the last best predictor, openness to experience increased the predictive power to 51.8 percent (R = .720, R2 = .518). Also, running Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient indicated that four of the components of BFPT – except for Openness to Experience – show significant correlations with EI (P < .05). They ranged for a high of .63 (P = .000 < .05) for Neuroticism to -.03 (P = .663 > .05) for Openness to Experience. As for subscales of EI, Neuroticism showed significant correlations with all of the subscales of EI except for Interpersonal. Extroversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness showed significant but negative correlations with subscales of EI. Finally, Openness to Experience showed non-significant correlations with components of EI. It can be concluded that five factor model of personality had strong influence on emotional intelligence of EFL learners.

emotional intelligence, Big-five personality traits, effective learning, EFL learners